


If This Is Love, I Do Not Want It

by just_your_average_ultracrepidarian



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: BotFA spoilers - Freeform, Canon Relationships, F/M, Funeral, Post-Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_your_average_ultracrepidarian/pseuds/just_your_average_ultracrepidarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuation of The Battle of the Five Armies.  (To avoid spoilers, click for more detail)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If This Is Love, I Do Not Want It

**Author's Note:**

> Occurs directly after Kili's death in BOTFA.

It took a long time for Tauriel to force herself to move.

It wasn’t the cold that finally caused her to stir. As she held Kili in her arms, she could still feel heat radiating from his body. Her own heat, she knew, because his had already seeped from his body and mingled with the blood staining the ice beneath them. But as long as she was there, as long as her body kept his warm, she could almost convince herself his eyes weren’t dead and empty, but merely resting. Once she let him go, the ice would seize him and drain the last of his life out. She had to stay with him. She had to force that warmth, that life, back into him, whatever it cost her, however much it hurt to kneel on the frozen ground and blink back the tears that were hot against her cheeks.

It wasn’t acceptance, either, that allowed her to abandon him. Acceptance was just not a possibility; half of her grieved, scattered and drifting in shock, but the other half clung to a pathetic and desperate hope that there was some way her eyes were playing tricks on her. Her hands, ghosting over his own, could touch a living, breathing dwarf again, she told herself. If she believed hard enough, she could make it so. The lips she’d pressed her own to would lose their cold purple color and flush red again. She had to believe that. If she didn’t, who would?

It was Thranduil who finally brought her to her feet. Uncharacteristically gentle, he put a hand on her shoulder. The motion woke something inside of her. With no fear left to swell in her ribcage, and no hope to fill her heart, the fury and horror that had been lurking under the surface came raging forth. She lashed out violently, catching her king’s arm and knocking it away from her.

“You did this,” she snarled. She was still not willing to let go of Kili’s body; he needed her to keep him warm. Or was it the other way around?

“Tauriel,” Thranduil said, soft, heavy. “We have all done this. We all bear the blood on our hands.”

“And we are lucky to have it on our hands, instead of on the ground, like those who died for us,” she cried, fingers curling into a fist, tangling with the cloth over Kili’s silent heart.

“Your pain will not vanish when you blame someone else,” Thranduil told her. “I know this better than most.”

Her anger fell from her gradually, the rush of energy exhausting her. The fingers holding so tightly to Kili began to tremble and loosen. She could feel the cold again, like needles pricking her face and hands.

“He is gone,” Thranduil told her, kneeling by her side. The action made him more humble — in the woods, he may be a king, but here, on the lonely mountain, he crouched by the dead, his knees darkening with their blood, just the same as she did. “Nothing you can do will bring him back. He was mortal.”

“And you hated him for it,” she spat.

He sighed. “I regret a good deal many things. The words I said to you…”

“It does not matter,” she murmured. The dismissal came not out of a sense of forgiveness; far from it. It was only because she could feel only the overwhelming sense that things said, grudges held, and battles fought could not hold a scrap of significance for her anymore. Beyond this icy ledge, she felt as though there was little for her to care about.

She could only hold on to one thought. “I want to bury him,” she said, echoing what she had insisted earlier. This was one thing she could do for him. He should have a farewell, a proper one, from the ones who had loved him. The other soldiers would be buried honorably, but she wanted Kili to have something more.

“Let my men take the body,” Thranduil urged her. “Come inside.”

Somewhere in the confusion of misery in her heart, Tauriel felt a stab of anger. “I will not leave him.”

“You cannot stay out here forever,” he responded. “There is nothing you can do for him now.”

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. A tear dropped from her eyelashes and landed on Kili’s bloodied face. She knew Thranduil was right. She would have to pick herself up from the ground and begin to rebuild her life, piece by piece. She would leave out the part of herself that had once had room for love. Love, she thought derisively, almost hysterically. What a pitiful, horrible concept. She wished she had never known its warmth.

She allowed herself to be helped up, but was numb to whatever action she herself took to stand on her own two legs. Kili’s body slipped out from her arms, his head lolling on the ice. Her hands still reached for him, but she could barely see them. She was blinded, by grief or by the tears blurring her vision, she couldn’t tell.

Thranduil led her away. She would be able to recall the exact moment she looked at Kili for the last time. When she dared to think of the memory later, she would be able to picture it in perfect detail. He was lying in a position that could be easily mistaken for sleep. The sun was striking the ice under his body and throwing up brilliant rays of light; it turned his dark hair lighter, redder, and made his wounds look less savage. One of his hands, the one holding the stone that he had given to Tauriel along with a promise he had not kept, was lying on his chest. He looked beautiful, and she hated herself for thinking it.

That would be the last time she saw his face. At his burial, he was covered in a heavy golden cloth and adorned with flowers.

The day he was buried, Tauriel wore black for the first time in her life. The dwarven company stood around the grave, silent. They had many burials to attend that day. Only feet away from Kili was his brother, covered with scarlet velvet.

The holes had already been dug. All that remained now was to say their goodbyes. Thorin would be buried separately, in the kings’ tombs within the castle.

Tauriel knew it was tradition for dwarves to sing as they lowered their dead into the ground. Accordingly, Balin opened his mouth and made a noise, but he could go no further. He tried once more and shook his head before lowering it and clearing his throat gruffly.

They stood in a silent ring for several seconds, the wind snapping their clothes against their legs and ruffling the cloth over the bodies.

Impulsively, Tauriel began to sing, her voice thin in the quiet. If Balin couldn’t do it, she would; she’d sing for the blood spilled, lives and love lived and lost. Her heart was so heavy that she thought it would drown her voice, but instead it amplified it. The sound carried itself over the barren hills.

The song she chose was in her own tongue. It was a lullaby for their children, and told the tale of a young warrior who marched off to war and died to save the country — and the people — he loved. Her voice caught in her throat as she sang it, but she didn’t stop until she’d finished.

The dwarves listened to her, and despite not knowing the exact words she sang, they understood. She was giving the last gift to Kili she could; her thoughts, her voice, and her heart.

Balin and Dwalin began to lower Fili into his grave, while Bifur and Balin carried Kili. Tauriel couldn’t bear to watch their bodies being laid in the ground; she wanted to stop what was happening, reverse time — change it, somehow. The practicality of the scrape of boots and creak of ropes was stark in the somber atmosphere.

The brothers’ swords were laid across their chests, a mark of the honorable lives they had led. Tauriel stepped forward and knelt by Kili’s grave. Her hands were perfectly still, but the shimmering vial dangling from the chain she held swayed in the wind. The liquid inside was a precious treasure that had been retrieved from the dragon’s lair — a tiny sample of the light of Telperion. Drawn from the old and well-loved trees, the water seemed to be light in liquid form. The only other material like it that Tauriel knew of was the Evenstar, kept by Arwen in Rivendell.

She had not come across the vial by entirely honest circumstances, but she trusted that only one who would realize what was missing would be willing to turn a blind eye. Thranduil had kindness inside him, however deep it might lie.

The light from the vial lit the earthen walls of Kili’s final resting place. Tauriel held it over his heart. It took a few seconds for her to uncurl her fingers and let it drop onto the cloth.

“I brought you our stars,” she whispered. “I only wish you could have seen them yourself. Please … don’t be alone in the darkness.” She hesitated. “Keep me close.”

There was nothing more to say, nothing more she could say. She stood and found that the damp of the ground had soaked into her dress. The wind howled as the dwarves began to fill the graves. Tauriel hesitated, not sure if she would be allowed to help.

Balin saw her expression and silently offered her a spade. It was old and crude, borrowed from Lake-town’s dwindling supplies, but it was all they had. She accepted it gratefully and pushed the point into the dirt.

The work was soothing. She could let herself forget that she was piling dirt on top of Kili’s body if she threw herself into the mechanics of the task. Side by side with people she would have called enemies not long ago, she let her mind go blank. It was a comforting to feel nothing.

She’d go south, she decided. To Gondor. They needed to be warned of the danger coming for them, the whispers that had been coming from the Elves in the North. And it was far enough away from this place that she might be able to forget what had happened.

Even as she thought it, she knew she couldn’t ever forget, not really. She’d always have a certain voice and face in her mind, dwelling on the edges of her thoughts, even if she walked to the other edge of the world. She’d have nightmares about his blood on her hands until she died. And perhaps then she would not need to dream of his face and his hands; perhaps then, she could see them and hold them herself.


End file.
